Interesting that you should mention that because I have a long screed of opinions to type about that very thing. 8) It was actually pretty difficult to get interpreted IF into the App Store due to rules against emulation, and they had to make specific exceptions for interactive fiction. If there were a major established corporate player trying to commercialise ‘interactive fiction’, would Apple have broken its own rules to allow in Frotz with its huge library of free games? Frankly, I don’t think so. All they had to do was not answer complaints to prevent it – something they are extremely good at. I think the only reason they loosened their emulation restrictions is that people complained, AND it didn’t really hurt their interests to fix it, because these are free communities that currently aren’t stepping on many plutarchs’ toes – but this state of benign neglect seems unlikely to last. There are going to be a LOT of DRM wars – we are not even into the thick of them, most like – and ‘interactive fiction’ (whatever that refers to) is probably going to end up being one of the biggest hot potatoes in play. Just wait until the ebook makers realise there are too many players in the space for many to differentiate themselves very effectively, and then suddenly interactive ebooks (they’re a thing) are going to be pushed. Hard. It will be awful, totally without good gameplay principles, and much more like a novelty item, but, like 3D in the theatres, even though nobody in their right minds will really want it, it won’t really matter a whit because publishers will start to premier titles exclusively in crapware. Shortly afterward, almost every clueless former street publisher is going to be writing letters (well, more letters) to Apple complaining about why the hell is a bunch of their potential ‘audience’ (and they will claim us, all of us, as their own audience) is routing around paying what’s naturally owed. They could easily crush our whole community, commercially, without ever noticing that not a single one of us is likely ever to buy their products, regardless of whether they outlaw ours. When we complain, people will say, ‘Nobody is forcing you to buy Apple.’
But of course, the same thing with the Windows app store, since they are basically following Apple’s lead. Heck, even the former Android Market is closed up some from where it started: how much further will that go. I don’t trust Google, either. I don’t want to focus only on Apple as if they are just that much extra eviller than everyone else. They are just the ones taking the lead on this, because they can. If Microsoft had tried to take the lead on curtailing user freedoms, they’d have been eaten alive. Just like ‘only Nixon could go to China’, only Apple can slip on the velvet cuffs, because whatever they do, there are like ten thousand commentators saying, ‘Apple knows what they are doing. Trust Big Brother.’ Microsoft doesn’t have that kind of blind trust (anymore), so they don’t get to be on point on this, but if you notice, every single anti-user-freedom move Apple makes, Microsoft is not far behind…
Anyway, it’s not exactly a conspiracy because the desires of legacy publishers to control everybody’s computer are talked about quite openly, it’s just that currently few people take them seriously, but that could easily change if we let them attain a position where they have any kind of financial leverage in the digital space. Legacy publishers cannot really be safely trusted with anything for at least a generation – basically, at least until the current generation of leaders is all retired or dead. ‘Legacy players’ even now includes the entire AAA video game industry – although it didn’t used to include those companies, because most of those companies learned in the 80s that anti-piracy didn’t work, with floppy disks. And smart people at those companies stopped trying to inconvenience pirates (which they never actually successfully did – since pirates don’t try to mainatain a publically legal front, they are the only ones not hurt by DRM and laws supporting it), and took a different approach and removed DRM from all floppy disks. Almost the entire games industry did this. Ah, those were the heady days when logic and the truths of what is possible vs. what is totally impossible, were things that had actual sway in the world.
Of course, that was before video gaming became the most lucrative entertainment industry on the planet. Then all of those sensible lessons of experience went completely out of the frickin’ window. So that’s why I do not hold out too much hope for freedom in computing in the near term, and I do not take the ‘standard & practices’ of today for granted. Instead I look to what all of these major corporate powers are trying to legislate. What is being added to these easy-to-overlook international treaties like ACTA and TPP, so that your government can tell you when they turn the screw a little tighter, that they are merely ‘complying with international obligations’ – obligations that they forced upon all the other nations just so they could say that. 8)
IMO, anyway. I really don’t see what’s going to prevent this scenario besides way more people getting alarmed about it. Certainly it’s not going to be benevolence on the part of Apple or any major computing player that is going to prevent the closing of this frontier. It will be us: only us, right? So prepare to fight. 8)